Showing results by narrator "Jack Wynters" in All Categories

Brighton, 1938. Charlie "Big Bad" Woolf thought it would be easy money, and there’s precious little of that for a private detective in a seaside town. It was just a trip up to London to hand over an envelope - a favor for his old partner, Alan O’Connor. But Woolf couldn’t resist taking a peek inside. The pictures were unadulterated smut: a man and a girl in a hotel room. Blackmail, pure and simple - right up O’Connor’s street.

If someone had asked Sherlock Holmes later in the year, there is little doubt that he would have said his life began that spring day in 1871 when he met Violet Rushdale upon the moors and ended in the winter some months distant. His mother would have disputed the former claim, and many, both friend and foe, would come to deny the latter. Yet what happened that year nearly cost him his life and his sanity, and strongly influenced the man he was to become.

Norman Grubb, the son of an Irish clergyman, was born in England in 1895. He served as a lieutenant of the Bloucester Regiment, receiving the Military Cross for his service during World War I. Following the war, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and married Pauline Studd, the youngest daughter of the famous missionary C. T. Studd. The Grubbs served as missionaries in the Belgian Congo where Norman translated the New Testament into Bangala. After Studd's death in 1931, Norman served as British General Secretary of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade until 1965.

Trespassing into forbidden territory, 16-year-old Cyrus LongBones discovers that his small island is, in fact, a giant, fossilized turtle shell. With the villager’s obsession of working the earth, the skeleton collapses in on itself, killing Cyrus’ brother and destroying his village. Unjustly blamed for the disaster, Cyrus is forced to flee his crumbling island and sail in search of a new home. When Cyrus learns that a creature known as the Sea Zombie is at the root of his brother’s death and his people’s corruption, he must make a decision that could cost him his soul. 

When vengeance calls, death is its shadow. Billy Robertson is out for revenge and the target in his sights is Dennis Marks. Holding the DCI responsible for the death of his younger brother, Jack, Robertson seizes on the opportunity given to him by Harold Shaw - another violent criminal falling foul of the skill of one of the Met's finest detectives - from the confines of his cell at HMP Wandsworth. After his run-in with the IPCC, Marks is plunged into a murder case involving the death of a teacher at Lainsford Grammar School in Edmonton.  

The hilarious tale of the UK Independence Party's journey from rags to riches and back again from a front-line activist. Paul Oakley had five minutes of fame at a Young Conservative conference when he ripped up a copy of the Maastricht Treaty at the end of his speech attacking John Major's European policy. He stood for the Tories in the 2005 general election but failed to lie convincingly enough to be added to the A-list of candidates when David Cameron became party leader. So in 2011 he renounced his Tory membership in a fit of pique and joined UKIP.

Photographer Septimus Blackwood is on a quest to rebuild and rise up of the ashes of his own ambitions. He encounters many unforeseen obstacles, including the mysterious inhabitants of a long abandoned theater, a nefarious foe, and an elusive nocturnal gang. As the luminescence of gas lamps stretches across a dark city, a power struggle ensues. Among the mayhem is Rick Best, a reporter turned detective with an obsession to track down one of London’s most notorious villains, Spring-Heeled Jack. The Movement of Light will linger long in the shadows of your mind.

Owain was dedicated to three things: Wales, the Order of the Rose, and most of all, his cousin, Elizabeth Tudor. From the moment he met the mysterious Anna Elizabeta, he denied the attraction. Yet when England's spymaster sends them on a mission, Owain throws caution to the wind and claims her. When she won't tell him her secrets, Owain rejects her upon their return to court. It takes an act of treason for Owain to realize what was his. To recover Anna, Owain must lead the Roses against a stronghold of the Sons of Scion - the Order's archenemy.

Mr. Jasper Winslow, the once meek and mild second son of a viscount, is a chocolatier who specializes in fine French chocolates, which helped him put the pain of his lost love behind him. He’d made peace with his life… until a chance meeting with the woman he would have wed reminds him that his heart hasn’t forgotten. Strong-willed and independent, Miss Evangeline Bradenwilde wants to be seen in Victorian-era society as more than the connections she can make through marriage.

In this romantic thriller, you'll find out if Heather, the ravishing daughter of the Duncans, can save the largest shopping enterprise in the world and become the CEO in answer to her family's prayers.

By universal consensus, there’s only one exhibition worth seeing at this year’s Venice Biennale. Giuditta Cancellieri’s Il Timore di Dio, six paintings of something as yet undisclosed. Don’t bother buying tickets, though. A court order means no one’s getting in, not even the artist’s closest associates. The city’s been filling with felons. Most observers don’t think that’s an accident. At least one rumor suggests the paintings depict Italy’s most powerful gangsters, or its politicians, in compromising positions.

A mariner turned slaver captures and abuses a young island woman. Her practice of voudou reveals that she is not what she seems. Following the death of his entire crew by her hand, the mariner marries the priestess but is haunted by what he learns and what he must do to stop her. Fiction recounting history's only successful slave revolt: the colony of St. Domingue. Includes story synopsis. Author's note: The themes illustrated here are historically accurate but of an adult nature and disturbing. Please read with caution.

London 1925: Ex-boxer Harry Stubbs goes undercover, working in a mental institution to investigate an epidemic of madness. Bizarre deaths occur at the asylum, seemingly linked to an occult power. As he starts to unravel the mystery, Harry’s grip on his own sanity becomes increasingly precarious. Who is behind the killings? What are the strange new treatments doing to the patients? Why can Harry not get any reply from his handlers? To get answers, Harry must to venture into the borderland between magic and science, sanity and madness, and face the Master of Chaos....

Kenneth Lund realized his business success and amassed wealth could not get him out of this problem. Kenneth was addicted to sex - though he would never admit it. Faced with the biggest tragedy of his life, he knew he had to turn his life around and change his old habits and egocentric ways. He began by setting out to save the planet and decided to register with the Blue Marble Club. But at every turn was an opportunity to get back into the lifestyle - including reconnecting on Callisto Akantha. Its motto, "Be audacious - Have sex", offered everything Kenneth wanted and more.

When Samantha Watson walked into the Bank of England and inherited $6 million she had no idea that she would fall in love with the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. Nor did she have the slightest inkling she would be drawn into a sinister world of vampires and evil.

The tendency for art to detach itself from any duty to reflect observed reality manifested itself in avant-garde art production almost from the beginnings of the Modern Movement in art. It is already present in pure form in Malevich’s drastically reductive Black Square, which consists of exactly that, a black square on a white ground. It is interesting to note the way in which this work was exhibited when it was first put before the public.

The word avant-garde, so much used in connection with the various manifestations of contemporary art, is starting to have a strange, ironic ring to it. One might even claim that it is starting to signify what is behind the times, rather than in front of them. Like all such terms, it is in fact a metaphor, rather than a direct description. Borrowed from old-fashioned military terminology, it seeks to describe a situation where social norms are being perpetually challenged by artists. In the military sphere, where it originated, it is long out of use.

Spring 1917 - the war has been raging for over two and a half years, and neither the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) nor the Entente (Britain, France, Russia, and Italy) are any closer to a decisive victory. In Russia, the Revolution and enforced abdication of the Tsar has left the country in the shaky hands of the Provisional Government, but as the Bolsheviks begin to seize power, it is clear that behind the scenes, something rather sinister is occurring.

In this modern world of too much money that discontented wife no longer gains pleasure from buying a new pair of shoes and the frazzled husband has lost interest in fitting new gadgets on his car, making it easy, too easy, to move from consumerism to physical pleasures. And with online websites so readily available there are more than enough ways to dabble. Jessica's husband, Kenneth Lund, surprised her on their tenth wedding anniversary with an unaccustomed night of wild sex. It was hot and spicy and she loved it, making it easy, too easy, to shift their sex life from mundane to erotic, one clouded by too much booze.

When I visited the huge Damien Hirst exhibition staged by the Gagosian Gallery in New York in 1996, one of the most striking pieces was a large glass tank full of live fish. Dumped among the fish were an obstetrical couch, in a rather decayed condition, and various obstetrical implements. For some time after I had seen the show, this image tugged at my mind. It reminded me of something - but of what? Finally, memory dragged up the reference I needed: Hirst's piece was a direct descendant of Salvador Dali's installation, "Rainy Taxi".